The present invention generally relates to intelligent analysis of device compatibility and adaptive processing of multimedia data based on requirements and limitations of a connected device. More specifically, the invention relates to an apparatus and a method for intelligent analysis of device compatibility. Furthermore, the invention also relates to an apparatus and a method for intelligent analysis of multimedia data and electronic devices for optimal and error-free adaptive processing of the multimedia data transfer between electronic devices.
More emphasis are placed on today's new electronic devices to communicate seamlessly with other electronic devices. A cellular phone which was primarily used as a standalone voice-communication electronic device twenty years ago is now expected to be connected to a user's computer, a vehicle communication and audio system, and numerous kinds of portable electronics. In order to satisfy consumers' ever-increasing demand for device compatibilities, many consortiums of companies have formulated standardized wireless and wired communication protocols to provide an ease of communication compatibilities among a plurality of electronic devices. Bluetooth, IEEE 802.11-based wireless LAN protocols, and IEEE 1394 “FireWire” standards are current industry examples of standardized device level interfaces to provide device compatibilities.
The industry trend today is minimizing the burden of manual device configurations from users for more satisfying user experience. However, in most cases, a complete application-level compatibility requires at least one device to possess some driver-level information of a connecting device. In one conventional case, the driver-level information of a first device is already present (e.g. pre-installation, and etc.) in a second device before the first device is connected to the second device using a common standardized protocol. In another conventional case, the driver-level information of the first device is transferred to the second device during or after a hardware-level detection of an operative connection (e.g. physical wire connection, PHY-level wireless protocol connection, and etc.) between the first device and the second device. Some application-level initial device connections require manual configurations of device drivers, while others are automated upon physical-level connections.
Another example of the present limitation of providing user-friendly device compatibility is a well-known compatibility concept called “Plug-n-Play”, which enables a peripheral device to be recognized by a PC when the peripheral device is plugged into a PC communication port (e.g. serial, parallel, EISA, PCI, and etc.). “Plug-n-Play” was largely popularized by Microsoft's Windows 95 operating system released in the mid-1990's. Although “Plug-n-Play” allows a computer user to plug-in a peripheral device for an auto-initialization of the peripheral device, it still requires a device driver to be either pre-installed in the PC or installed to the PC during the auto-initialization process. Therefore, in today's conventional methods of establishing compatible application-level connections, an electronic device which does not have or does not have access to driver-level information of a connecting device typically fails to provide a full application-level compatibility.
Therefore, it is highly advantageous to devise an apparatus and a method for intelligent analysis of device compatibility which enable a full application-level compatibility even without device driver-level information of a connecting device. Furthermore, it is also often advantageous to perform an intelligent analysis of multimedia data and electronic devices for optimal and error-free adaptive processing of the multimedia data transfer between electronic devices, typically after the intelligent analysis of device compatibility.